Latin Lovers Untamed: In Dante's Debt / Captive in His Bed / Brazilian Boss, Virgin Housekeeper

CHAPTER TWO

HE WAS already at the track office when she pulled into the driveway. As she slammed the truck door shut behind her, Daisy caught a glimpse of Count Galván through the office window, and her stomach did a sudden wild free fall.

Perhaps her father had liked working with the Galváns, but she didn’t. It wasn’t just the issue of the stud fee. It wasn’t an issue of trust, as much as one of personal dislike. The Galváns weren’t known for their ethics, and Daisy despised anyone who took advantage of the weak. But that’s how Dante’s father had operated. Tino Galván preyed on struggling businesses, pumped them up with cash or promises of financial assistance and then later moved in for the kill, seizing not just the investment but the small business itself.

Dante was sitting on the edge of her desk reading a stack of paperwork when she walked through the door. She recognized the papers as their yearly farm report, a dismal record of all the losses they’d incurred in the last year. She couldn’t help shuddering inwardly, recalling that disastrous fire. The losses had been horrifying. On paper the farm was an absolute disaster. But she refused to let him see her fear. “Found what you wanted?” she asked grimly.

He made a rough sound and gave his head a silent, derisive shake. “It’s worse than I thought.”

Daisy felt heat sweep through her, embarrassment and shame. “It’s been a hard year.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” He tossed the report onto the desk next to him, the paper sliding to a far corner. “You don’t have any income. What happened to your great new breeding program? Where are your boarders? Your investors?”

She hated that she had to defend their business, especially to him, and still found it inconceivable that they owed his family so much money.

Nearly half a million dollars for a stud fee? Highway robbery, that’s what it was. Daisy couldn’t hide her hostility. “We have plenty of boarders. We’re training more horses today than ever before.”

“Pet ponies, not thoroughbreds.”

“Our work may appear trivial to you, but we’re a respected farm—”

“Without a competent manager,” he softly interrupted.

“I am the manager.”

“My point, exactly.”

The gloves were off. He wasn’t worried about hurting feelings any longer, or bloodying noses. It was war, and he intended to win.

He pushed off the desk and moved to the window. His narrowed gaze swept the distant farm buildings, focusing on the old barn in need of a new roof and the new stable, erected after the old one had burned down, that had yet to be painted. “You haven’t paid me, and you certainly haven’t maintained the farm. So what have you done with your money? How did you blow my father’s investment?”

His words were a relentless assault, a hard pummeling that made her ache.

Daisy closed her eyes, swayed on her feet and wished for the first time in years that she’d never fallen in love with horses and hay and Collingsworth’s green meadows.

She wished she didn’t care so much about colts, yearlings and winning the big races. If she didn’t care she could walk away from it all. If she didn’t love the whole business so much she could give up on the disaster taking place at Collingsworth’s and become someone else. But she did love the business—she loved the horses, the foals, the stallions, all of it.

He’d turned from the window and was studying her with the same detached scrutiny he’d viewed the farm buildings. Daisy felt his gaze all the way through her and dug her nails into her palms as heat flooded her middle. She didn’t want to feel him. Didn’t want to be aware of him. She wanted nothing to do with him. Not now. Not ever.

“We didn’t blow that investment,” she answered hotly, moved by emotions she couldn’t name. Her heart raced as though she were one of the yearlings on the track, and she felt dangerously close to tears. “Our farm has been struggling for a number of years. American farmers have been struggling for a decade. But we’ve made progress this year. We’ve made progress under my management.”

Her gaze met his as she emphasized the last words, her chin lifting defiantly. “I realize being Latin, and male, you don’t want to work with a woman. But in this case, you don’t have a choice. My father retired earlier this year. I run the farm now. I cut the checks. I make the decisions.”

Dante turned completely around. “I have no problem working with women. I just don’t like working with stupid people.” He paused as her lips parted, her eyes widening. “But I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re very intelligent and perceptive enough to realize I don’t play games.”

His arrogance made her see red, and yet beyond the emotional reaction came another response. Unwilling admiration. He’d dealt with conflict before. He was handling her like a pro.

It crossed her mind for the first time that she just might be in over her head.

What if she couldn’t pull this off? What would happen to the farm and her family? She pictured Zoe, pictured her sister twisting and untwisting the dish towel.

A lump lodged in her throat, and she swallowed with difficulty. “I don’t play games, either, Count Galván. I want nothing more than to work this out with you. But I have to be honest. I’m not prepared to lose the farm. It’s been in our family since nineteen-eighteen, when my great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland. This is home.”

“Miss Collingsworth—”

“No. Don’t do it. Please. Give me one more year.”

She saw a flicker of emotion in his face, his eyes darkening and his jaw tensing. She felt his ambivalence and thought for a moment he’d relent. But then he gave his head a sharp shake.

“And do what?” He laughed shortly, “Watch as your barn burns down next? Sorry, muneca, can’t do it.”

She felt as though the air were being strangled from her. “Can’t, or won’t?”

“Both.”

He did pity them, she thought faintly, it was there in his face, in his voice, in the cynical twist of his lips. His smile was bitter, the lower lip curling, accenting his high carved cheekbones and the hollows beneath.

My, he was beautiful, like a fallen angel, but only worse because he was real. Daisy had never felt so out of her depth before. How on earth was she supposed to pull this off? “Why not?” she whispered.

“Bad business. You make an exception for one, you’ve set a precedent. Before long you’re making exceptions for all. So I don’t do it. Won’t do it. For anyone.”

A soft, strangled sound ripped from her throat. She hadn’t meant to cry out. She’d thought she had better control over herself.

She turned away, leaned against the desk, palms pressed flat on the scratched surface. She pressed hard, pressing against the suffocating desperation. It couldn’t be this bad. It couldn’t be the end. Everything was here. Her whole life was here. Even her mother was buried here.

Her rage threatened to boil over. “If your father were alive—”

“Your father shouldn’t have agreed to work with him,” he interrupted.

“My dad was charmed by your father.” She dug her nails into the desk. “Charmed right out of the farm.”

Dante saw her fingers whiten as she pressed them against the desk. Her blue eyes shone dark with pain, and her soft lips twisted, compressing to keep her misery within. She didn’t want to reveal her suffering but she couldn’t quite hide it.

This was his father’s responsibility, and now it had become his.

He drew a slow breath, feeling the tightness in his chest, conscious of his self-disgust. His father, Tino, should never have made the deal with Bill Collingsworth. But his father had never been able to resist easy money, or what he perceived to be easy money. Tino had intended to take possession of Collingsworth Farm and add it to the stockpile of farms, ranches and family businesses that he was accumulating around the world.

The problem with Tino’s plan had been that most of these family businesses were bankrupt or nearly bankrupt, and all were in need of massive infusions of cash.

Tino’s greed had almost bankrupted Galván Enterprises and it had taken Dante nearly two years to break up and sell off two dozen debt-ridden ventures.

What a waste of time.

He’d arrived in Lexington to settle with the Collingsworths. The unpaid stud fee was the last debt uncollected, the last of the headaches Tino had left behind, and Dante needed closure. He needed to move forward and close the door on the past, but suddenly it wasn’t that simple.

He rubbed the back of his neck, easing the knot of tension tightening the muscles there. He didn’t owe the Collingsworths anything and didn’t have to work with them, but Daisy was complicating everything.

Her golden blond beauty and leggy elegance had nothing to do with his change of heart. It was her courage, her intelligence, her passion for the horses.

He couldn’t forget her expression as she watched the horses race earlier in the morning. He’d seen the wonder in her eyes and sensed her devotion. She loved the horses profoundly. It seemed criminal to make her suffer for her father’s mistakes—and his.

Don’t do it, he told himself. Don’t turn soft now. This is exactly why you and Father always fought. This is why he called you names.

He swallowed, and his mouth tasted sour. This bad day was getting worse. Yet he couldn’t ignore his conscience, couldn’t throw the Collingsworths from their home.

If only he didn’t feel so much, care so much, he might be a bigger success. He might be a multibillionaire instead of just a multimillionaire.

His lips twisted cynically. “Maybe there is a way,” he said, pushing aside his personal fatigue to focus on the Collingsworths’ needs.

He moved toward her, felt her stiffen as he leaned past her slender body to pick up the farm records. Heat surged through him as his arm brushed her shoulder. He hadn’t meant to touch her, yet the touch felt electric.

Daisy slid from beneath his arm and moved quickly to the water cooler. She lifted a chipped cup from the shelf behind her but didn’t fill it. Instead she stared at him, hands clasping the mug, apprehension in her eyes.

She’d felt the electricity, too, he thought. She’d felt the same current that had passed through him.

“What?” Her voice was pitched an octave lower.

She was right to be mistrustful. Dante’s mouth tugged. His motives weren’t entirely pure. He did want her more than he’d wanted any woman in a long, long time. “Let’s look at the books together. Perhaps we’ve overlooked something.”

Hands jerky, she filled her cup with water and brought it to her mouth, but she didn’t drink. “When?”

“Now. Unless you have something more pressing to do?”

Three hours later Daisy wished she’d had something more pressing to do. She would have been willing to agree to Chinese water torture instead of looking at the farm books with Count Galván.

Three hours of shoulder-to-shoulder contact. Three hours of her thigh accidentally brushing his. Three hours of the most crazy tension imaginable, a tension that balled in her belly, tight and hard and heavy.

She wasn’t attracted to him, was she?

Disconcerted, Daisy frantically pushed up and away from the desk, needing to create some immediate distance. She walked to the water cooler again and filled her cup, gulped the chilled water until it was gone.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” No. She drew a small, shallow breath. The truth was her head swam, her nerves were shot, and she felt terrible.

They’d come to no resolution about the debt, but one thing she knew. Dante Galván was not good for her. He made her feel nervous and unsure of herself and completely unbalanced. This wasn’t the way she liked to function. This wasn’t a comfortable sensation. It was making her sick.

“Should we take a break?” she suggested, thinking she definitely needed some air.

His dark gaze met hers and held. He searched her eyes. She didn’t know what he was looking for and she certainly wasn’t about to reveal anything more. She’d already exposed too much weakness.

“I think it’s best if we just continue,” he answered. “The sooner we get this settled, the sooner we can put this behind us.”

Her wish exactly, she thought with a ragged sigh.

Finally, an hour later, they finished going through the records. They’d gone over every entry, discussed every line, checked her numbers.

Dante closed the report and sat back, stretching his legs in front of him. “How were you going to pull this off, Daisy?”

It was the second time today he’d called her by her given name, and the way he said her name undid her. He made her feel hot, awkward, self-conscious. She’d never felt uncomfortable in her skin before, but he was peeling away a protective layer and exposing raw nerves, tender nerves. How could he do this to her? How could he make her feel so—so … naked?

Feeling oddly undone, Daisy gathered the loose papers on her desk, the bills that he’d asked to see, the pedigrees on the new foals. She struggled to organize her thoughts even as her hands shuffled the paperwork. “I don’t know, but I would have. I could have. I always do what I say I will.”

“Always?”

Something in his voice made the air catch in her throat, and she looked at him, hands stilling, heart stopping. His dark gaze held hers.

He didn’t believe her. But then he didn’t know her determination or her sheer will. If she set her mind to something, she succeeded. Without a doubt. “I haven’t broken my word yet.”

He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at her, looking into her, and it was then she realized his eyes weren’t dark brown. They were considerably lighter, almost the color of toffee ringed by a darker gold. What made his eyes appear dark was the intensity in his expression. His eyes were beautiful. Like the rest of him.

She felt heat rise through her, wave after wave of warmth until her cheeks burned and her lips felt as though they were melting.

“You’re so sure of yourself,” he said softly.

Her mouth tasted like sawdust. “I have to be.” Was that her voice? “I love my home. If I can’t find a way to keep the farm, then I’ve failed my family.”

“But you didn’t create this mess.”

He was doing something to her, taking hold of some emotion inside her chest and shaping it, changing it, making it his. She didn’t like it but she didn’t know how to stop it.

Daisy rose to her feet. “It doesn’t matter. It’s my job to straighten it out.”

He suddenly reached out and caught her hand in his, stopping her from moving away. “One person can only do so much. You’re a smart woman, a strong woman, but you’re just one person. This, muneca, is a huge farm. Right now you’re understaffed, overworked and hip deep in red ink. Daisy, beyond the debt you owe to my family, what are you going to do?”

His fingers slipped to encircle her wrist. The pad of his thumb stroked her racing pulse. She felt as though she were melting, starting on the inside, deep down in her belly. The heat spread, as did the honey warmth, everywhere, making her aware of her thighs, her breasts, her oversensitized skin.

Her cheekbones felt scalding hot. She stared at him in mute fascination. His lips were perfectly shaped, his chin hard, a hint of a beard shadowing his jaw. She swallowed.

“Daisy?”

Her gaze lifted, and her eyes met his again. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to know what his mouth would feel like. Wanted to know what a mouth like that could do.

“Daisy.”

His voice was impossibly deep, increasingly husky. Even his accent sounded thicker, and she shivered inwardly, fearful and yet thrilled.

He tugged gently on her wrist, drawing her forward. She sucked in air, her head feeling far too light. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt this way. If she’d ever felt this way. A kiss was just a kiss, but she wanted this kiss badly.

Yet just before his lips brushed hers, he hesitated, and his hesitation brought her firmly back to reality.

Was this any way to do business? Is this how she hoped to save Collingsworth Farm?

She must be out of her mind.

Daisy broke free and walked on wobbly legs to the far end of the office. She moved the window blind aside. The sun came through the glass in faded golden rays, highlighting a dust spiral in the middle of the floor.

“Now you know where the money’s gone,” she said, voice shaky, more breathless than usual.

He hadn’t moved. He still sat in the leather chair at her desk. “Not exactly.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. Her eyes met his. It was like touching a live wire. Every glance, every touch was a jolt, and the intensity of the jolts was making her tremble from head to toe. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t understand about the stable. Why isn’t there any record on the insurance settlement from the fire? Is there a reason you’ve kept it off the book?”

They’d kept nothing off the books. That would be illegal. Not to mention just plain wrong. “We don’t operate that way,” she answered flatly, wondering how he could say such things. Did he really think so little of them?

She drew a rough breath, trying to ignore the turbulent beat of her heart, and turned to look at the stable. The building was less than six months old, the siding unpainted, the wood still fragrant.

“Then tell me about the fire.”

No, he wasn’t going to put her through the third degree about the fire now, was he? Did he really have so little trust? “The fire is private. It’s nobody’s business but ours.”

“Answer the question, Daisy.”

“No.”

“If you don’t work with me, I can’t work with you.”

She spun on him, her hair slapping her shoulder, hands on her hips. “There you go, throwing your weight around. It must be wonderful having that kind of power. But I’m not going to go there, Count Galván. I’m not going to lay down and grovel just because you want to feel superior.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s not why I’m asking.”

“No? What is your point then?”

“The settlement on the stable would have been at least a quarter million dollars. It would have gone a long way to paying off your debt. But there’s been no record of a settlement in your books. Why?”

“Maybe because there’s been no settlement.”

“You haven’t received a payout?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

She almost felt like laughing. It must be nerves. “Not even a penny.” She saw his incredulity. “We were insured, but it’s all tied up in litigation.”

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. She could see exactly what he was thinking. The rumors were everywhere —in Lexington, in the neighboring farms, at the track. It was whispered that the fire had been purposely set. The Collingsworths had risked cashing in on their bankrupt farm. They were trying to bail out of the business before they were chased out.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

But Count Galván didn’t care about facts. He’d already formed his own opinion. She saw his horror, felt his disgust. No animal lover could imagine setting one’s stables on fire to enjoy a fat insurance policy, but that was what everyone thought they’d done.

That was what Count Galván thought they’d done.

She left the window and crossed the floor to stand within a foot of him. “The rumors are false.”

“The fire wasn’t deliberately set?”

She’d never forget that night, the heat, the dense, suffocating smoke, the acrid smell. She’d never seen anything like it in her life. The flames had been ungodly. The stable went up in minutes. No time for the fire department to come, no time for anything.